Dying church?
Andrew Mumford
Date posted: 1 Jul 2008
Book Review
FROM EMBERS TO A FLAME
How God can revitalize your church
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Darby rides again
Alec Motyer
Date posted: 1 Jul 2008
Book Review
ISRAEL, GOD’S SERVANT
God’s key to the redemption of the world
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Champion
Brian Beevers
Date posted: 1 Jul 2008
This article is mainly a summary and review of the biography of Caroline Cox, subtitled A Voice for the Voiceless, by Andrew Boyd.
I would like to start with an extract from the foreword to the biography, written by Lord Tonypandy: ‘I regard Baroness Cox as one of the grLion Bookseat women of our generation — a 20th-century prophet. She has awakened the conscience of the House of Lords to the terrible challenges that face Christians in other lands.’
Reaction and distraction
Ranald Macaulay
Date posted: 1 Jul 2008
When Marian Evans’s novel Adam Bede came out in 1859 it made the name ‘George Eliot’ justly famous.
Her novels soon took their place among the finest in the English language. To discerning readers, however, Marian’s scepticism indicated a growing problem about Christianity and the church.
The Third Degree
Daniel Hames
Date posted: 1 Apr 2008
For many UCCF Christian Unions (CUs) around the country, February means missions.
What happens when you join a small church?
David Hall
Date posted: 1 May 2008
David Hall describes how one small Anglican church in rural Sussex mobilised for mission.
After a fitful night’s sleep, the soldiers emerge from their dug-in positions, stretch and check their weapons one last time. They have all written their final letters, now they scan the horizon apprehensively, grateful for air support, special forces already in position, artillery back-up, the naval blockade and, above all, their colleagues in the regiment.
Is it smart to forget God's wrath?
Peter Jensen
Date posted: 1 Jun 2008
One of the gravest weaknesses of contemporary Christianity is the little attention paid to the wrath of God. We have become sentimental and have so stressed the love of God as to become unwilling to talk about his wrath.
In part this is because the culture will not let us do so. There is an outcry whenever the clear teaching of the Bible is given in public. Church members have to live in this world. They do not want their minister to talk about unpopular or divisive subjects. The minister is aware of this and he is tempted to soft-peddle on matters that are scriptural. Among them is the subject of God’s wrath.
Drifting away from church?
Camerin Courtney
Date posted: 1 Jun 2008
One day last summer I lost my church. Or rather, it lost me.
I’d been out of the country a couple weeks, and, therefore, hadn’t been to church in a while. My first Sunday back, I showed up at the usual time and place ready to reconnect with friends through a communal experience of faith.
Wet behind the years
Erroll Hulse
Date posted: 1 Apr 2008
Book Review
THE BAPTISTS
Key people involved in forming a Baptist identity
Volume Two: Beginnings in America
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Who will take up the Gateway challenge?
Nigel Hoad
Date posted: 1 Apr 2008
Looking to move? Wanting a challenge? Then the Gateway Project could be for you!
Quite simply it is a project to grow a new church in the biggest redevelopment and regeneration area in Western Europe! The UK Government and private finance have been pouring billions of pounds into regenerating the hinterland of the Thames Estuary from the Pool of London along both banks of the river in north Kent and south Essex.
New horizons at Foreign Missions Club
John MacPherson
Date posted: 1 May 2007
An American aid worker stressed out after ministering for many months to victims of the Chechnya conflict.
A Palestinian Christian couple serving fellow Palestinians in refugee camps. A Californian doctor on his way to help for several weeks in a mission hospital in Ethiopia. The director of a large Australian missionary society touring their areas of operation with his successor. A group of Norwegian Lutherans returning to missionary service in Madagascar. A Finnish agriculturalist, long retired, meeting up with former colleagues from the United Mission to Nepal. A Peruvian doctor about to begin a new career as a theological teacher in Colombia. City missionaries from all over the UK attending a conference in London.
A Common Word: drawing the line
John Peet
Date posted: 1 Apr 2008
In 2006, Benedict XVI, pope of the Roman Catholic Church, made a statement challenging the Islamic world about their militaristic and terrorist practices throughout history and so questioning the frequent claims that it is a peaceful religion. This statement was, not surprisingly, unwelcome to the Islamic religious authorities as it exposed a truth that would hinder their aims and progress towards increasing control of the Western world.
Very quickly a group of scholars representing a range of Islamic thought produced an Open Letter to the Pope and, later, A Common Word Between Us and You. The latter document was written by 138 Islamic scholars to highlight ‘the common ground between Christianity and Islam’. That wording in itself should have been enough to warn evangelicals, and Christians of a wider spectrum! They go on to say that ‘despite their differences, Islam and Christianity not only share the same Divine Origin and the same Abrahamic heritage, but the same two greatest commandments’ (their emphasis). Again that does not require someone to be a theologian to see the flaws.
UK Christianity in the 21st century
The new edition of Religious Trends (Christian Research) gives details of all the 275 denominations now constituting the Christian scene in the UK. It lists the number of members, churches and ministers for each of the years 2000, 2002-2006 with an estimate for 2010. The information was provided by each denomination, or estimated on their behalf. It also forecasts the overall figures ahead for 40 years to 2050. The basic figures are more interesting than they might look at first glance!
More buoyant: more people!
The figures published previously for 2005, revised in this new volume, were 5.6 million for the UK and 5.2 million for 2010. What has happened to cause these previous estimates to change so much? In a single word, immigration! We all know that thousands upon thousands of immigrants are coming to the UK at this time, the majority from the EU. Unlike other countries in the EU, the UK allowed citizens from Poland and other countries which joined in 2005 to be eligible for entrance to the UK immediately. Many of these immigrants came from Christian countries, both Protestant and Catholic, and have joined local churches wherever they have settled in the UK. More seem to have settled in England and Scotland than Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Great Outdoors
Andy Banton
Date posted: 1 Mar 2008
Back in the 1920s, the then Secretary of The Open-Air Mission, Frank Cockrem, wrote a pamphlet to challenge preachers of the gospel not to confine their invaluable ministry to the four walls of their churches.
Such a challenge is needed even more urgently today. Since far fewer people attend church in 2008 than they did back then, out-door or open-air preaching is even more vital. Below is an updated version with seven questions which is written neither to offend nor discourage, but with the sincere desire that more needy sinners will hear the glorious gospel, and be saved.
Monthly arts and media column
Eleanor Margesson
Date posted: 1 Apr 2008
Is her controversial book How to Cheat at Cooking professional suicide? Or does Delia know more about our cooking habits than we are ready to confess? Eleanor wonders if she’ll need to bother putting her apron on.
For those like me learning to cook in the 1980s and 90s, Delia was our guiding light. Moving us on from Mrs. Beeton, her Complete Cookery Course could be used to look up any dish and follow simple instructions to obtain a decent result.
Ten for God
John Benton
Date posted: 1 Apr 2008
Until 1989, Poland was a Communist state ruled from Marxist Russia. Religiously, traditional Catholicism was the dominant force. But, during the years 1975 to 1990, God used a music group Deo Decyma (Ten for God) to spread the good news of Jesus Christ in Poland. This is something of their story.
The Krol family, headed up by the father Wilhelm Krol, a professor of civil engineering in Gliwice and a lay preacher, were evangelical Christians. Though their surroundings were quite hostile to the gospel, nevertheless the children, Nina, Henio and Adas, knew the Lord and felt very secure and free in Christ.
Why it's cool to care
Brian Edwards
Date posted: 1 Apr 2008
Today, there are more 80-year-olds than 18-year-olds in our nation. By 2020 5% of the population will be over 80.
A couple of decades ago the St. Paul’s Methodist Seminary in Kansas established a professorship in gerontology — the study of old age. The reason for this was that some students found themselves pastoring churches where 100% of the congregation are over 65.